How can you ensure a cost-effective cloud migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving your data, applications, and infrastructure from on-premises servers to a cloud provider. It can offer many benefits, such as scalability, reliability, security, and flexibility. However, it can also incur significant costs, especially if you don't plan and execute it properly. In this article, you will learn how to ensure a cost-effective cloud migration by following some best practices and tips.

1 Assess your current environment

Before you migrate anything to the cloud, you need to assess your current environment and identify what you want to move, why you want to move it, and how you will move it. This will help you determine the scope, complexity, and feasibility of your migration project. You should also analyze your current costs, performance, and resource utilization, and compare them with the potential cloud options. This will help you estimate the return on investment (ROI) and the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your migration.

Add your perspective

Roman Burdiuzha

Cloud Architect | Co-Founder & CTO at Gart Solutions | DevOp, Cloud & Digital Transformation
Report contribution
Embarking on a cloud migration requires a meticulous assessment of your current environment, whether on-premises or in the cloud. This foundational step involves: Documenting all components, both physical and virtual, such as servers, storage, and networking devices. Categorizing workloads by criticality, resource needs, and interdependencies, analyzing performance, dependencies, and data flows. Evaluating data volume, type, and sensitivity, addressing residency, compliance, and encryption requirements. Understanding application architecture and dependencies. For existing cloud providers, evaluating vendor lock-in levels and considering the effort and implications of potential migrations.

Like

2 Choose the right cloud provider and service model

There are many cloud providers and service models to choose from, each with different features, pricing, and compatibility. You need to choose the one that best suits your needs, budget, and goals. For example, you can choose between public, private, or hybrid clouds, depending on your security, compliance, and control requirements. You can also choose between infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS), depending on your level of customization, management, and integration.

Add your perspective

3 Optimize your cloud architecture and configuration

Once you have chosen your cloud provider and service model, you need to optimize your cloud architecture and configuration to maximize your efficiency and minimize your costs. This means designing and deploying your cloud resources according to the best practices and standards of your provider. For example, you should use the appropriate instance types, sizes, and regions, based on your workload and performance needs. You should also leverage the cloud-native features and tools, such as auto-scaling, load balancing, monitoring, and backup, to automate and optimize your cloud operations.

Add your perspective

Alfonso Graña

Senior Engineer | Devops Enabler | Cloud Expert | SRE Experienced
Report contribution
Some other things to consider at this stage: - How the growth of your product aligns with the spending in the cloud. If these magnitudes follow different behaviours, you could be in trouble if your business grows, which is a bad problem. - Investigate pricing models. All major cloud providers offer discounts if you commit to usage long term, 12–36 months. They usually offer cheaper prices for lower availability or increased latency, like AWS spot instances or AWS S3 lower storage tiers.

Like
Leandro Santos

Software Engineer | Cloud Architect
Report contribution
From my perspective, this step is arguably one of the most important aspects of a successful cloud migration. You should ensure that your workloads are right sized for the right amount of resources they need to run in your chosen cloud provider. Avoiding over provisioning of compute resources, disk storage space and networking bandwidth will make sure you keep your cloud computing costs in check and under control.

Like

4 Implement a migration strategy and plan

After you have optimized your cloud architecture and configuration, you need to implement a migration strategy and plan that will guide you through the actual migration process. You should choose a migration method that fits your situation and objectives. For example, you can use a lift-and-shift approach, where you simply copy your existing applications and data to the cloud without any changes. Alternatively, you can use a refactor or rearchitect approach, where you modify or rebuild your applications and data to take advantage of the cloud capabilities. You should also define a migration timeline, budget, and roadmap, and assign roles and responsibilities to your migration team.

Add your perspective

5 Test and validate your migration

Before you finalize your migration, you need to test and validate your migration to ensure that everything works as expected and meets your requirements. You should perform various tests, such as functionality, performance, security, and compatibility tests, to verify that your migrated applications and data function properly and comply with the cloud standards and policies. You should also monitor and measure your migration outcomes, such as cost savings, performance improvements, and customer satisfaction, to evaluate the success and impact of your migration.

Add your perspective

6 Optimize and manage your cloud environment

After you have completed your migration, you need to optimize and manage your cloud environment to maintain and enhance your cost-effectiveness and performance. You should continuously monitor and analyze your cloud usage, costs, and performance, and identify any issues or opportunities for improvement. You should also implement cost optimization and performance optimization strategies, such as deleting unused or underutilized resources, using reserved or spot instances, applying security and governance policies, and updating and patching your cloud applications and data.

Add your perspective

Alfonso Graña

Senior Engineer | Devops Enabler | Cloud Expert | SRE Experienced
Report contribution
Monitor your costs daily: There are tools to achieve this: - Budgets to alert when spending is over a certain threshold. - Cost reports with changes month to month. A report that looks at your previous bill, compare it with the current one and see what changed: which account, which service in which region, this will help you identify trends quickly. Make this data available with the whole organization to create awareness and accountability. - Cost anomaly detection alerts. - Infrastructure cost checks in CI/CD to have a quality gate for changes increasing expenditure.

Like

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

Add your perspective

System Administration

Rate this article

We created this article with the help of AI. What do you think of it?

It’s great It’s not so great

Report this article

See all

How can you ensure a cost-effective cloud migration?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Assess your current environment

2 Choose the right cloud provider and service model

3 Optimize your cloud architecture and configuration

4 Implement a migration strategy and plan

5 Test and validate your migration

6 Optimize and manage your cloud environment

7 Here’s what else to consider

System Administration

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

More articles on System Administration

More relevant reading

How can you ensure a cost-effective cloud migration?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Assess your current environment

2 Choose the right cloud provider and service model

3 Optimize your cloud architecture and configuration

4 Implement a migration strategy and plan

5 Test and validate your migration

6 Optimize and manage your cloud environment

7 Here’s what else to consider

System Administration

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

Explore Other Skills